Learn how the E-N crime team does their jobs and read about the quirky characters they encounter and the sometimes bizarre things that can happen at a crime scene that don't make it into their stories.

Vianna Davila: On the Death Watch

Only when I get to the small East Texas town does the sky suddenly go gray.

This must be a sign. Suddenly I am caught up in thoughts of an endless swirl of clouds hanging over this city, the place where all Texas death row inmates are executed.

Within an hour, the sky over Huntsville is also blue, the color edging out the gray as if a child has furiously colored over it.

There goes my theory.

If you go to the right places, Huntsville is strangely normal. Ignore the red-bricked building where hundreds of inmates have died and you might think you were in any small town that’s grown up around an interstate and a state university. I walk into the Starbucks off of I-45, a few miles away from unit where executions take place. I order a Chai Tea Latte and wonder if it’s in bad taste to buy a froufrou drink two hours before I’m to watch Robert “Beaver” Perez die for killing two men in 1994.

Around me there are smiling, happy, hip looking people. I imagine some are students or professors that hail from Sam Houston State University. That thought reminds me of something else funny, the giant statue of Sam Houston himself, also on I-45 as you enter Huntsville, a figure that at night looks like a more stately version of a Japanese movie monster.

Should you find things to laugh about here, in a town where countless have died for crimes that involved the deaths of countless others?

In the Huntsville prison media office, I wait with two other reporters and two public information officers from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The mood is lighthearted. Someone comments on the cake left behind by a German film crew, here to make a documentary about the American prison system. A television is set to a 24-hour news channel, where the day’s main story is the firing of an American female astronaut charged with attempting to kidnap a romatic rival for a fellow astronaut’s affection.

I type furiously on my laptop, rechecking the facts of the “skeleton” story I’ve already written. All that’s left to do is to get the meat of the story — the actual death of this man, Robert Perez, who is about to die in 30, now it’s 15, now it’s one minute to go.

As this is all unfolding, in another prison building, Perez still manages to work up an appetite.

He ate almost all of the last meal he’d requested — the five pieces of fried chicken, the two double cheesburgers, the three enchiladas, the french fries, onion rings, 7 jalapeno peppers and one whole onion. What Perez couldn’t finish he left for the chaplain who would administer him his last rites.

It’s after six when we are led into another building and are frisked (quick, painless, not too embarrassing). Then we are taken down a long narrow hall. We stop about 20 feet behind a group of people who wait at a door. I can tell by the demeanor of one of them — and it is only the back of him I see, his head hanging down — that these must be Perez’ family members. And they are — a wife, two sons and a brother.

We hear a door open, and we begin walking. Every few feet along the wall hang photographs of what appear to be eagles. I can’t tell whether this is an attempt at decoration or patriotism.

Then we are outside again, walking through a gated fence. Barbed wire curls along the fence top. Above it, on the roof, I see an officer holding a rifle. He looks down. I’m assuming he’s here to make sure we keep in line, that no one gets hysterical, violent or tries any of the proverbial funny business. He won’t have to worry, at least about me.

Then we are in a room smaller than a walk-in closet in a luxury home. All of a sudden it begins.

We hear Perez’ voice over a speaker, but he can’t hear us. His family members press their hands to the glass. There is crying. Oh crap. I am crying. I am trying to hold it in, because there’s a public information office and two veteran reporters beside me, and I’m trying to stay professional. I wipe away the tears. The scribble of my pen on reporter’s notebook suddenly sounds as loud as a chain saw. I try to write more quietly. Whatever crimes this man committed — and they were brutal, and officials said they were many — his family is owed some respect. This moment is owed respect.

“I got my boots on,” Perez calls to his family from the gurney, just as a doctor administered the lethal dose that would end his life. “Like a cowboy.”

He asked for his wife to take care of his children and to stay strong. He asked her never to remarry, though they had only met the year before when she wrote him as part of an inmate pen pal service.

He is smiling when the doctor pronounces him dead at 6:17 p.m., March 6, 2007.

Then it is over. Then we are all running out, to our deadlines. I am trying not to cry in the car on the way back to the La Quinta Inn where I will rewrite my story, make more phone calls, haggle with my editors and finally get it done. I cry briefly with one editor. Then the story is officially over.

And in the middle of the night, I do what isn’t very smart and get up and leave for Houston, where I have friends. I’m not haunted by Robert Perez. I’m not scared. I’m not even crying. I just don’t want to be here anymore, in Huntsville, where life continues as usual yet it doesn’t, not ever. Not really.

So I drive down I-45, illuminated by the spotlights that shine on the Sam Houston statue even at night.